Fort Ticonderoga Welcomes Graduate Fellows

(Ticonderoga, NY) Four graduate students arrived at Fort Ticonderoga in mid-June to begin two-month internships as part of the Edward W. Pell Graduate Fellowship program. The fellowships run through August 12th and include internships in Education, Exhibitions, Horticulture, and Interpretation.

“These fellowships for graduate students in museum studies, museum education, public history, history, public horticulture, American studies, or military history offer an opportunity to work together with our dedicated museum team,” said Fort Ticonderoga President and CEO Beth Hill. “The Fellows will focus their research and creative energy to support exhibitions and programs related to the year 1757 at Fort Ticonderoga.”

“While working individually with their project supervisors,” added Rich Strum, Director of Education, “Fellows will also meet and work together throughout the two-month experience. They will have an opportunity to work with Fort Ticonderoga’s professional staff as part of our collaborative approach to all major projects.”

This year’s Graduate Fellows are:

Education—Elizabeth Scully, from New York University

Exhibition—Connor Wilson, from Texas State University

Horticulture—Riley Clark-Long, from Connecticut College

Interpretation—James Wils, from North Carolina State University

Each Fellow receives a $2,500 stipend along with on-site housing. Fort Ticonderoga received 28 applications from 26 different university programs for the four available fellowships.

The Edward W. Pell Graduate Fellowships launched in 2015 with four graduate students from Stonybrook University, Texas State University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Western Michigan University. Projects completed by the 2015 fellows included researching and cataloging artillery-related artifacts and the design of hands-on components for the new exhibition “The Last Argument of Kings: The Art and Science of 18th-Century Artillery” which opened in May 2016. Another fellow conducted research and transcribed the Philip Skene Papers in the collection for use with the 2016 Fort Ticonderoga Teacher Institute focused on “British Perspectives on the American Revolution.” The Interpretation Fellow delved into the British use of Canadian Corvée during the 1777 invasion of New York. That ground-breaking research led to an invitation for Fellow Richard Tomczak to present his research at the 1st Conference of the European Labor History Network in Turin, Italy, in December 2015.

The Edward W. Pell Graduate Fellowships at Fort Ticonderoga are made possible with the support from the Edward W. Pell Education Endowment at Fort Ticonderoga and generous individual donor support. Graduate students interested in learning more about the 2017 Edward W. Pell Graduate Fellowships should contact Rich Strum, Director of Education, at rstrum@fort-ticonderoga.org.